The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

by Mordecai Richler

From Mordecai Richler, one of our greatest satirists, comes one of literature's most delightful characters, Duddy Kravitz -- in a novel that belongs in the pantheon of seminal twentieth century books.
Duddy -- the third generation of a Jewish immigrant family in Montreal -- is combative, amoral, scheming, a liar, and totally hilarious. From his street days tormenting teachers at the Jewish academy to his time hustling four jobs at once in a grand plan to "be somebody," Duddy learns about living -- and the lesson is an outrageous roller-coaster ride through the human comedy. As Richler turns his blistering commentary on love, money, and politics, The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz becomes a lesson for us all...in laughter and in life.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Classics, Canadian Literature, Jewish, Novels, Literature

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Working-class Jewish background based novels, which include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and Saint Urbain's Horseman (1971), of Canadian writer Mordecai Richler.

People best know Barney's Version (1997) among works of this author, screenwriter, and essayist; people shortlisted his novel Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) for the Man Booker Prize in 1990. He was also well known for the Jacob Two-two stories of children.

A scrap yard dealer reared this son on street in the mile end area of Montréal. He learned Yiddish and English and graduated from Baron Byng High School. Richler enrolled in Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) to study English but dropped before completing his degree.

Years later, Leah Rosenberg, mother of Richler, published an autobiography, The Errand Runner: Memoirs of a Rabbi's Daughter (1981), which discusses birth and upbringing of Mordecai and the sometime difficult relationship.

Richler, intent on following in the footsteps of many of a previous "lost generation" of literary exiles of the 1920s from the United States, moved to Paris at age of 19 years in 1950.

Richler returned to Montréal in 1952, worked briefly at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and then moved to London in 1954. He, living in London meanwhile, published seven of his ten novels as well as considerable journalism.

Worrying "about being so long away from the roots of my discontent", Richler returned to Montréal in 1972. He wrote repeatedly about the Jewish community of Montréal and especially portraying his former neighborhood in multiple novels.

In England in 1954, Richler married Catherine Boudreau, a French-Canadian divorcée nine years his senior. On the eve of their wedding, he met Florence Wood Mann, a young married woman, who smited him.

Some years later, Richler and Mann divorced and married each other. He adopted Daniel Mann, her son. The couple had five children together: Daniel, Jacob, Noah, Martha and Emma. These events inspired his novel Barney's Version.

Richler died of cancer.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful paysage moralisé, or in more ancient terms, a morality play about a superficially picaresque character who in the end gets the just desserts of a Hungry Ghost. For The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is really the fall of Willy Loman in medias res.

Who do I call the Hungry Ghosts?

Well, the Hungry Ghosts in the Kagyu Branch of Tibetan Buddhism are ravenous Ringraiths with huge cavernous mouths and tiny, wasted stomachs. In their damnation, like the hungry souls in the second circle of Dante’s Inferno, they forever ‘can’t get no satisfaction’ for their endless ring of desires.

They are the Hellhounds, too - the ones who will pursue you mercilessly to the Pit of Hell, if you listen to them - and our planet is full of ‘em. But believe it or not, these evil voluptuaries are the tamest of the bunch of hellhounds on our planet.

They are buffeted and rebuffed by furious windcurrents which, being ghosts or spirits, they can offer no resistance.

Such is Duddy. And capitalism breeds these doomed Ringwraiths by the million - and they remain unsatisfied in the world to come. What would be their cure, if they were able to find one?

Simple. Just dwelling peacefully in the Sacrament of the Present Moment.

The present is always available to us. But if you continually keep your eyes on the bouncing balls - the procession of all possible satisfactions of your appetite - you’ll soon be lost. Here in this world, and in the next.

The pure present doesn't live in attraction or repulsion. It just heals, because it is empty and astringently healing, like a light breeze over the summer ocean. Emptiness hurts no one.

The present moment is vast and healing in its quiet, unvarnished simplicity. Living in it is something you can build your life on. But you can’t heap the rags of your desires on it, or you’ll lose its magical promise. And lose your way.

Stick with the Pure Being of the Present. It is expansive, vast and luminous.

I once had a workplace buddy named Bob. Bob too was a Hungry Ghost - impulsive, affable at first but later a persnickety smart aleck, up and down endlessly - and never satisfied. A worrywart slacker to boot.

Caught up in his, and his friends’, wearisome antics I nearly fell as flat as he did. The Hungry Ghosts are never satisfied...

Caught in that music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

Don’t be a Duddy or a Bob, friends, though their crass music is now around us everywhere.

Rest easy in the pure present moment and ignore those easy, raunchy lures.

For there is truly no Rest for the Wicked:

But for the good souls, there is simple Grace in brimming good measure.

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richler writes about Montreal the way Dickens writes about London: as if the city was a character. He loved Montreal and he is preaching to the choir with me, because I am crazy about my city as well, and I wish I could have seen it at the time "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" takes place, the post-WWII era when hockey players didn't wear helmets but everyone wore hats. I love getting lost in a story taking place in the city my grandparents knew and lived in. I love descriptions of the streets before the skyscrapers were built, and I love the occasional mention of a landmark that I see regularly on my walks.

Duddy is bascially a loveable rascal, with a flexible moral barometer and a single-minded ambition to acquire a piece of land in the Laurentians, as he is haunted by a statement made by his grandfather: "A man without land is nobody". His interpretation of that sentence is quite literal, and after a miserable childhood and adolescence, he will use his entrepreneurial spirit and (often dishonest) resourcefulness to reach his goal. "The Apprenticeship" follows Duddy through his various scams and schemes to acquire his very own promised land - with the ultimate goal of being someone.

The maxim of "a man without land is nothing" is an interesting one, because we never really know if old Simcha Kravitz meants that literaly or not. Coming from a Jewish man who had fled Europe at the begining of the twentieth century, such a statement could have been about a few acres to look after himself, but it could also have meant land in the broader sense - a place one feels like they belong to, where they can plant their roots and feel at home, a motherland. Interestingly, there are also no mothers in this novel: Duddy's mother passed away years before the begining of the story and his uncle's marriage is childless.

It's hard not to admire Duddy's determination; the odds are stacked against this skinny little guy from St-Urbain, but he never gives up, and shows more ingenuity and (albeit sometimes misguided) industriousness than most people ever will. Richler's gift is to make readers fall in love with characters who would have been quite unlikable if they had sprung from the mind of less talented writers. What applied for Barney Panofsky is just as true for Mr. Kravitz: there's no logical reason to root for this little crook, but you do anyway. I think his antiheros are the kind you come to love because they are realistically complicated; they are human. Duddy's motivations can seem so materialistic, but they come from a genuinely tender place: he wants to make his grandfather proud, give him a land to farm and live out the rest of his days happy and content. This means Duddy's story is an interesting reflection on whether or not the means are worth the end result. Great things have greats costs, after all, and we must be prepared for that when we set goals and dreams for ourselves.

My own family is weird and complicated in it's own way, and the generational/dysfunctional dynamics painted by Richler ring very true, and occasionally hit quite close to home. Duddy's father, Max, is a petty crook himself and brought up his son with tales of another con-artist from their neighborhood, the Boy Wonder, who Duddy comes to idolize and tries his best to emulate. His uncle Benjy, on the other hand, is a high-minded socialist who nevertheless treats his employees in a deplorable way and can't keep his marraige together. In both cases, Duddy is often confronted to a "do as I say not as I do" attitude from his relatives and ends up feeling like nothing he does is right. That fuels his ambition to "be someone", but that fire is an unhealthy one and this has consequences on Duddy's ability to deal with emotions.

His relationship with Yvette, who is absurdly devoted to him despite his treating her like a doormat, made me sigh. At that time, the Catholic Church had a very strong influence on French Canadian sensibilities, and while Yvette's loyalty to Duddy can be seen as an act of love and defiance (she knows he'll never marry her because she's not Jewish), her attitude is also that of a long-suffering, resigned wife who puts up with a bad man's behavior because she feels that once committed, she doesn't have the option to leave (divorce is a mortal sin!). After the Quiet Revolution in the 1960's, that kind of attitude went out the window (as did the Church's influence over people) and hardly anyone gets married in Quebec anymore, common-law marriages now being the norm. Yvette reminds me of a generation of kind old aunts who spent their lives looking after other people rather than living it. She was Duddy's conscience - the one he never listened to.

Richler is not a writer of ornate prose: he writes like he talks, with a natural rhythm and a colorful and often politically incorrect grit, but with little poetry. His dark humour doesn't strike me as crass: he was a grumpy old man, and I have a weakness for those, they make me laugh. But I still struggled to decide how to rate "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz". The last section broke my heart and I am not sure whether or not I will ever want to pick it up again, so at the moment, I am giving it 3 and a half stars, rounded down to 3. It is a really good book, and while I admire the realism of it's conclusion, it is a little too hopeless for me.

[Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I touched down in Montreal in a howling snowstorm the same day that (unbeknownst to me, fortunately) another plane was crashing upside-down into Toronto Pearson. We sat on the runway for fifteen minutes while snow-plows cleared the gate, though this felt inconsequential after the delays I'd had, which had turned an eight-hour direct flight into a twenty-four-hour extravaganza involving a ten-hour layover in Brussels. It's not possible to survive on waffles and good beer for that long. I tried.

What this meant was that the slim book I had brought for the flight was exhausted almost immediately, and by the time I reached my destination I had read the in-flight emergency card thirty times. I was desperate for reading material. ‘What brings you to Canada, eh?’ they asked me at passport control. ‘I'm looking for a decent bookstore,’ I confided hopefully.

The drive to the hotel was more of a controlled skid. After checking in, I immediately ventured back out to find books. It was that or knuckle down to the inevitable hotel Book of Mormon. It was -15°C and I quickly realised that I was woefully ill-equipped for the conditions. I had brought a beanie. I had not brought crampons. The bookshop I found was only a couple of blocks away (Indigo, it's called) but it still took about twenty minutes, most of them spent getting back up again.

And the first book I laid my hands on, after sliding through this hallowed doorway on all fours, was Mortdecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. I may have blacked out, but I think I held it aloft like Indiana Jones seizing an ancient artefact.

And perhaps this is appropriate, because in many ways this book offers a perfect artefact of Montreal's Jewish community around St Urbain Street in the 1950s. In the circumstances in which I came upon it, I suppose any book would have impressed me, but certainly this one did. It's presented as a kind of social satire, told mostly in dialogue, of the lives that came out of the Montreal ghetto; but beneath the frothy comedy and the Yiddish zingers, the book has a core that is steely-hard and cold, almost cruel.

Its central character – taciturn, clever and amoral – is an unforgettable antihero, who you root for even while being appalled by. If you're travelling to Canada yourself, this is a really good way into a particular part of the country's culture and history, and I can heartily recommend it as a book for your journey. But…maybe take a couple of others as back-up. Just in case.

[Jacqueline · Rating 1 out of 5]

I threw the book across the room when I finished.

[Helena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Duddy Kravitz is a self centered sneak, a thief, a con-artist, a scheister and thoroughly detestable character- but I love him. A Jewish kid growing up in Montreal during world war two, in a motherless family and mostly left to his own devices, Duddy Kravitz is basically a decent human being, deep down inside, somewhere I’m sure there’s a modicum of decency.

Duddy’s grandfather once tells him that ‘a man without land is nobody’, Duddy takes this to heart and when he finds the property of his dreams in the Laurentian Mountains this becomes Duddy’s sole mission in life. In order to gain possession of this land, Duddy first tries working legitimately then begs, cheats, steals and screws over just about everyone in his life, even those that should have left him long ago. Duddy also comes up with several, perhaps not entirely legitimate schemes, some more successful than others- but all with a certain level of ingeniousness to them. Duddy shows himself to be industrious and determined in the face of adversity. Duddy faces anti-Semitism, and the scorn of wealthy, more educated peers and perserveres. Just when Duddy begins to redeem himself in the reader’s eyes, showing tenderness or decency particularly with his family and very close friends- he will stoop lower still to realize his dream.

Somehow, through all of this, Duddy still remains a loveable character. I’m inclined to think that this has nothing to do with Duddy and everything to do with Richler. Duddy’s entrepreneurial ventures are hilarious, as is much of Duddy’s dialogue throughout. Brilliantly written characters, darkly comedic- one has to wonder if this is actually fiction. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz reads more like a memoir than a fictional account, a coming of age story for a Jewish con artist from Montreal. I highly recommend it. I will certainly read more of Richler’s work, I’m only sorry I waited so long.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This hasn’t aged well, and not just in the obvious ways. It’s certainly a work of its late 1950s moment, with all the racism and sexism to prove it. But it’s in a deeper, more ambiently all-encompassing way that this feels all but unreadable sixty-odd years on, and involves a certain exercise of the historical imagination, with respect not just to history of the culture but the history of the novel too. It’s a sort of book for which the contemporary culture has mostly lost its taste, for better or worse: satirical, unsentimental, farcical, populated with types more than people, morally critical but cynically so, and ultimately neither uplifting for the reader nor redeeming of its hard-to-love picaro protagonist. But it’s also an often genuinely engrossing and even suspenseful narrative, fine-tuned in its voice, coarsely humorous, and splendidly evocative of its setting. Somewhere between 3.5 and 4 in the end.

[Amaranta · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Duddy Kravitz era un ragazzo di quindici anni, piccolo di statura, con le spalle strette e il viso affilato. Gli occhi neri erano cerchiati di occhiaie scure e le guance pallide e ossute erano coperte di graffi, dato che si radeva due volte al giorno per stimolare la crescita della barba". .
Il primo libro che ho letto di Richler è stato “La versione di Barney” e l’ho adorato. Leggendo del giovane Duddy ritrovo il seme di quel Barney che poi crescerà. Ironico, pieno di energia, pronto a tutto, forse un po’ acerbo ma piacevole. Duddy si adatta a tutto, vende francobolli, saponi, fumetti porno, arrotola cinture in fabbrica, fa il cameriere perché ha un sogno e con un sogno si va lontano. “Un uomo senza la terra non è nessuno, ricordatelo, Duddy” gli dirà l’amato nonno Simcha. E lui se lo ricorderà a tal punto da fare del denaro l’unica ragione della sua vita per perseguire quel meraviglioso sogno. In questo ritrovo la tempra e la potenza dell’amato Martin Eden, lavorare, studiare fino a crollare, fino a svenire e poi il buio.
Una lettura piacevole. Una riflessione sulle molteplici vite che l’uomo può condurre.
“Un ragazzo può essere due, tre, quattro persone potenziali, ma un uomo una sola: quella che ha ucciso le altre.".

[Kara Babcock · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a kind of bildungsroman for an anti-hero. We first meet Duddy through his Scottish history teacher, the tired and broken Mr. MacPherson, who earns Duddy’s enmity when he insults Duddy’s father and quickly finds out that he has crossed the wrong boy. From the first, Mordecai Richler establishes that Duddy is a bully and prone to holding a grudge. Indeed, Duddy’s long memory figures prominently in a novel that is, as its title implies, his personal journey into adulthood.

One of the best tricks that Richler pulls off is managing to make a short span of time feel like over a decade has passed. The story takes place before Duddy reaches twenty-one (then the age of majority in Quebec), with the bulk of it happening when he is around eighteen or nineteen years old. Owing to the speed with which Duddy wheels and deals, however, it feels like more years pass. The moment Duddy graduates from school and is unleashed upon the unsuspecting Montreal landscape he never rests. Always, his grandfather’s assertion that “a man without land is nothing” nips at him, spurring Duddy onwards in the pursuit of picturesque farmland around Lac Saint-Pierre.

The novel succeeds or fails based on one’s feelings about Duddy. It’s easy to love him: he is relentless, almost a force of nature. When he is good, when he is helpful and kind to those around him, he is like nothing else. He is clever to the point of cunning, and when he’s with his father or even his grandfather, there is a tenderness to him—a fierce desire to make his family proud. Uncle Benjy recognizes this when he later confers upon Duddy the title of “head of the family”. Unlike the other Kravitz men, Duddy is an operator. For all his father’s tall tales about friendship with the enigmatic Boy Wonder, it’s Duddy who gets things done.

It’s easy to hate him: he is relentless to the point of self-destruction. When desperate—and oh, how often he gets desperate—he will lash out and make deals no matter what the cost, breaking them later if he comes to regret or feel chained by them. At times it almost feels like Duddy cares about nobody other than himself—this is untrue, manifestly, because he cares about his family … but he is not someone who gets close to others. The way his mistreats Yvette, his sometime-lover whom he calls his “girl Friday”, is the most egregious example of Duddy’s ability to hurt those close to him.

Yvette enters the story as something less than a girlfriend of Duddy’s. They grow close during his summer at a hotel in St. Agathe, where Yvette hails from. She eventually acts as a secretary and middleman for Duddy’s dealing with a notary through whom he begins to buy up the land around Lac Saint-Pierre. Yvette is older and able to hold title to land, so the land is actually in her name for most of the book. However, Duddy and Yvette’s relationship is anything but straightforward. Duddy routinely pursues other women, and other men seem to enter Yvette’s orbit (but it’s not always clear what her relationship with them is). Virgil later acts as a third body in this problem, his cohabitation with the two of them introducing a new dynamic that eventually results in Yvette’s retreat back to St. Agathe.

The novel follows a rise-then-fall pattern standard for these kinds of coming-of-age stories. Nevertheless, the ending is quite interesting. Duddy is poised between two, seeming mutually exclusive paths. He can choose kindness, goodness, a life with Yvette and a conscience free of guilt … but at the cost of that land. Or he can allow his ruthless pursuit of the land to trump all other concerns … but it means saying goodbye to Yvette forever, and likely making more enemies along the way. Richler pleads with Duddy to take the former course through the voice of Duddy’s departed Uncle Benjy in a letter that laments how the harshness of the world often makes us harsh in turn. And for a short time, it feels like Duddy will actually manage to shake off this obsession with land … for a time.

In the end, Duddy brings his family to see the lake and all the land he now owns. He has burnt a lot of bridges in the process, and the victory is bittersweet. His grandfather, the man whose advice started this all and to whom Duddy promised some land for a farm, is upset by the price of all this. Duddy suddenly finds his triumph now tastes of ashes. But he is not to be beaten so easily, and the end of the novel implies that Duddy is committed to being a “smooth operator” and a big player in the community of Montreal Jewish businessmen. Whether this makes him happy or not is not question Richler answers.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a compact and careful story with a lot to recommend about it. The description on the back of my edition rightly pegs Duddy as “one of the most magnetic anti-heroes in Canadian fiction”. This is the first novel I’ve read from Mordecai Richler, and already I understand why he has received such acclaim. Although the story is deeply connected with the topical concerns of that era—the integration of Jews into a larger, predominantly francophone Montreal; the threat of Communism and the McCarthyism of the United States; the nascent movie production business—it still feels timeless, and it helped me understand how people who grew up in an area like Duddy’s might have felt and struggled back then. You can’t ask for much more than that.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picaresque romp following the rise and rise of the titular antihero, the son of a pimp whose insane ambition to acquire a plot of land catapults the reader through a sequence of comic set-pieces, some involving Duddy’s brother Lenny Kravitz who wants to fly away from his medical studies. Fortunately, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over for Lenny, who is rescued by his brother—always on the run, with the stillness of heart to save him again—in between courting his American woman Yvette who, heaven help her, brings out the human in him. Published in 1959, the novel explores the relentless pursuit for riches and power through the prism of antisemitism and class, putting a slight spin on an age-old morality tale. Entertaining, full of frenetic comic energy, the novel ultimately overstays its welcome as Duddy’s mania builds to a fever pitch of foulness. The film version from 1974 was adapted by the recently deceased Australian director Ted Kotcheff, who died one day before I started reading this.

[Gabriele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richler, oramai l'abbiamo capito, scrive sempre lo stesso libro. E per fortuna, aggiungerei io.

Non ho idea di cosa renda tanto riconoscibile la sua voce, ma ogni volta che mi trovo a leggere un suo nuovo libro fin dalla prima pagina mi fermo e mi dico: "ecco, questo è proprio il mio amico Mordecai". Deve essere la sua spietata ironia, unita al rendere protagonisti dei suoi libri personaggi fra i più scorretti della letteratura contemporanea. Scorretti, ma sempre capaci di far breccia nei cuori dei lettori.

Un po' come Barney Panofsky, leggendario protagonista de " La versione di Barney ", il giovanissimo Duddy Kravitz è la persona più scorretta, infida, imbrogliona che il quartiere ebraico di Montreal possa aver conosciuto. Spinto dalla smania di diventare ricco e possedere, così come il saggio nonno gli ha sempre suggerito, quel po' di terra che "dovrebbe renderlo qualcuno", appena finite le scuole Duddy si lancia nella ricerca del guadagno facile. Da rappresentante di saponette a venditore di flipper di contrabbando, da taxista nelle ore libere a impresario nel mondo del cinema, è tutto un pestare di piedi a nemici quanto ad amici, a familiari quanto a spietati concorrenti nella malavita locale, pur di raggiungere un veloce e impossibile successo. Duddy Kravitz non si fa scrupoli: imbroglia, ruba, promette già sapendo di non poter mantenere la parola, si autoassolve da ogni colpa e persevera nei suoi imbrogli, e tutto questo ad un'età in cui non è ancora maggiorenne. Proprio come Panofsky, Duddy è un personaggio che nella realtà disgusterebbe chiunque, ma che sulla carta diventa uno di quegli eroi negativi per cui ci si trova a fare il tifo: da lettori non possiamo fare altro che sperare nella riuscita delle sue malefatte e di vederlo raggiungere finalmente un obiettivo che, per quanto egoista, pare giustamente guadagnato.

Richler, come in tutti i suoi libri, è ironico e autoironico: il suo essere ebreo non gli impedisce di prendere in giro chi fin dall'infanzia l'ha circondato, irridendo i comportamenti del popolo eletto e inserendo nei suoi racconti tipiche espressioni yiddish, spesso anche al limite del turpiloquio. "L'apprendistato di Duddy Kravitz" scorre facilmente così come gli altri romanzi di Richler, lasciandoci un protagonista sopra le righe che, nel suo essere scorretto oltre ogni limite, commuove in certi suoi comportamenti e in certe sue ingenuità, rendendolo per questo tanto umano. Non è dunque difficile intravedere nel giovane Duddy Kravitz il personaggio che, più di quarant'anni dopo, conosceremo con il nome di Barney Panofksy...

[Arwen56 · Rating 3 out of 5]

L’apprendistato di Duddy Kravitz è ambientato a Montreal ed in particolare nel quartiere ebraico, dove Richler stesso nacque e visse per un certo numero di anni. Protagonista indiscusso della storia è ovviamente Duddy, quindicenne irrequieto, la cui vita l’autore ci da il piacere di seguire per qualche anno. Moderno picaro, Duddy è, come dire, rimasto folgorato da una frase pronunciata dal vecchio nonno: “Un uomo senza la terra non è nessuno”. Da quel momento in poi farà qualsiasi cosa per diventare proprietario di una serie terreni scoperti per caso e disposti attorno ad un lago.

In realtà, Duddy non dovrebbe esserci per niente simpatico. Sin dal suo primo apparire sulla scena, ci viene mostrato come uno sbruffoncello saccente che, troppo spesso, prima agisce e poi pensa. Non è per nulla “politically correct”, Duddy. Per realizzare il suo sogno, è disposto a mentire, ingannare, rubare, a fare la carogna e a tradire la fiducia persino delle persone che lo amano sinceramente. Eppure, il lettore si ritrova a fare il tifo per lui, a sperare che ce la faccia a comprare anche quegli ultimi, piccoli appezzamenti che gli mancano. E, alla fine, ci resta male quanto lui, quando il nonno gli volta le spalle e si avvia triste verso l’auto parcheggiata ai margini del lago.

Chissà perché. Forse perché Duddy è anche quel modo tenero di chiedere della madre morta quando lui era piccolo. Forse perché Duddy è anche quella forza di credere nei sogni a dispetto di qualsiasi realtà avversa. Forse perché Duddy è anche quello che, bene o male, tiene in vita i desideri di tutti gli altri componenti della famiglia. E’ un gran bastardo, Duddy, ma piace lo stesso.

Attorno a lui, si muovono poi tutta una serie di figure minori, ma non meno importanti: Lennie, il fratello secchione; Max, il padre un po’ taxista e un po’ “magnaccia”; Simcha, il vecchio nonno; zio Benjy, che non ci teneva a morire, ma muore; Yvette, la presunta fidanzata; e Virgil, il tenero e sfortunato ragazzo epilettico.

Niente male, niente male davvero.

[Krzysztof · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourite thing about Richler is that he expands my practical vocabulary: thanks to him, I can exhort friends to "Be a mensch!", I can call my girlfriend a "shiksa", I can refer to anyone other than myself as "you white people". It's great. And I'm not even Jewish! Another thing that's fun about Richler, which I think is also the reason why his books can be found on my parents' shelves: Canadian-Jewish society seems pretty Easterneuropean. The meddling, the gossiping, the intellectuocultural ambitionizing: these all strike me as perfectly Polish traits. Yet another thing that endears me to Richler is that his characters are hilariously politically incorrect, displaying an equal-opportunity combination of antisemitism and antigoyism (what's the word for that??) and condescension towards frenchcanadians and mistrust of the dreaded (and revered) white anglo saxon protestants. Caveats for those not yet familiar with Richler: he's over the top. The gags never stop coming, except to allow megadramatic moments that will leave you (i.e. left me) exasperated at the bad behaviour of some character (usually Duddy). I had like 17 heart attacks while reading this book. But in the end, Richler doesn't oversimplify: Duddy's neither good nor bad, he's complicated. I guess that's why the book nerd establishment has accepted Richler into the pantheon or whatever of literary what-have-you, despite his crass proclivities towards slapstick and hollywood-script-friendly drama. Mazel tov!

[Caleb Hoyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s shocking to me that this novel was published in 1959. It feels just as unflinching and edgy as something that would be published today. The main character is about as “anti-” as a hero gets, and yet I couldn’t help but root for him to get his land and become a somebody. His questionable tactics and actions don’t go unchallenged by the author or the other characters, but it never veers into a preachy moral fable. It’s messy and hilarious, but you can’t help but admire Duddy’s tenacity and – as his father calls it – nerve. That Richler is able to combine these ethical questions, social commentary, a really deeply layered family drama, and a lot of humor into a single narrative, and make it look so easy, is astonishing.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Mordecai Richler tells the tale of Duddy -- a young Jew from a poor, 1940s Montreal St. Urbain Street neighbourhood. Duddy is a complicated character. He has a rough-and-tumble childhood, acts out in school, and becomes a n'er-do-well and sort of gang leader, who few expect to succeed, unlike his 'gifted' older brother, Lennie. Duddy doesn't receive the same love and affection from his father or wealthy uncle that Lennie receives, and only his grandfather, Simcha, seems to believe in him. One day, Simcha tells Duddy that "a man without land is nobody," and this sparks Duddy's successive materialistic drive -- after this point in the novel, Duddy goes from being a trouble-maker, to being a single-minded young man on a mission, who will do almost whatever it takes to get himself a nice piece of land and become a 'somebody.' Part of Duddy's complexity lies in the fact that, while he is materialistically-motivated, he also plans to make his grandfather proud and happy by giving him his own portion of the land and a farm to spend his remaining days on; meanwhile, Duddy is also seeking love/pride/attention from his father and uncle, and he goes out of his way to help his family, especially his much-lauded brother Lennie (who he saves from self-destruction). Duddy is also racked with guilt through blaming himself for terrible events which befall one of his school teachers, and this torment worms a course through his ensuing life. And the poor kid has no mother and grows up in a rough neighbourhood -- basically Duddy is a victim. On the other hand, Duddy swindles, lies, cheats, steals, and tramples others who have what he wants, oppose him, or even love him -- such as his secretary/love interest/doormat Yvette, or young Mr. Virgil, a gullible epileptic associate of Duddy's. Duddy takes the high ground by professing to achieve fame all by himself, but while he does, spitefully, deny any financial support from his wealthy uncle, he also takes for granted all the help and support some, such as Yvette, lavish on him. In the end, Duddy gets what he wants, and perhaps what he deserves, and we are taught that greatness does not come without a cost.

Here's an important quote from the story on Duddy's complexity and struggle (page 279 of my mass market 1959 edition):

"[A letter from Duddy's uncle Benjy] There's more to you than money-lust, Duddy, but I'm afraid for you. You're two people, that's why. The scheming little bastard I saw so easily and the fine, intelligent boy underneath that your grandfather, bless him, saw. But you're coming of age soon and you'll have to choose. A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others."

Bonus Plot element: Benjy and Duddy feel (and later see) parts of themselves in each other and are thus repelled like magnets of the same polarity until it is too late...

Richler tells a great story. Apprenticeship pulls you into the 1940s Jewish Montreal world and takes you along on the Duddy train to success. You can almost hear the nasally stereotyped voices of some of Duddy's clients, feel the anti-Semitism or Jewish anti-Gentile sentiment, or taste the smoked meat. One such descriptive scene, a favourite of mine, mentions bare-chested bakers wiping their sweaty armpits with unbaked bread. Now that's getting into the nitty-gritty of it all! Richler lets you enjoy the dirt, the drama, the pathos, the love and loss and drive which propel this novel and keep you turning pages.

That's not to say Kravitz is perfect, however. While Richler builds a fine world, is a master of dramatic scenes, and tells a great tale, his writing is rarely beautiful or poetic. In addition, I sometimes find his technical style infuriating. He has a tendency to introduce and drop characters, change scenes, or switch to completely different narrators multiple times in the span of one page. This is perhaps compounded by the fact that my edition has no obvious time breaks or separation between lines of events. It's just blah blah blah character dies suddenly blah blah blah now we're in New York blah blah now there's a new character blah blah. Moreover, occasionally I find myself completely confused by Richler's dialogue and have no idea what is going on in the story -- in these cases it comes off as splotches of vomited words marring the otherwise appropriately-scuffed tiles of written fluidity. Additionally, it is just plain hard to sympathize with Duddy half the time, and hundreds of pages of him trying to get stuff becomes a bore to read. Finally, I find many elements of Kravitz very hard to swallow from a realistic point of view. For example, what are the odds of a young boy meeting and then working with an award-winning, internationally-renowned movie director? While I understand that those with great ambition can do great things and attract other great people, at best this character joins Duddy too early in his rise to power for me to swallow it. Characters such as this Mr. Friar seem to be introduced more for artistic purposes -- for telling a good yarn -- and much less for telling a believable, possibly biographical tale.

As to this latter complaint, I think its OK in the end. I don't mind sacrificing a bit of realism to digest a great story, and you probably won't either.

True Rating: 4.3 Stars

[Maud Lemieux · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Gros coup de coeur. Quelle histoire! Le pauvre Duddy, né pour un ptit pain dans une famille peu éduquée et peu fortunée, décidé de changer son destin. L'ambition, la mégalomanie, l'espoir incarnés par Duddy sont menés d'une main de maître par Richler pour dépeindre une époque, une condition sociale, et critiquer le milieu juif montréalais. Richler est définitivement un auteur que je vais continuer à lire!

[Michael Donolo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who figured mans relentless pursuit of land might harm others?

[Alexandre Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qu'on aime ou qu'on déteste Mordecai Richler le polémiste et la grande gueule, il est difficile de nier son apport à la littérature québécoise et canadienne. Je ne m'étais jamais tellement intéressé à son œuvre avant aujourd'hui, sans doute un peu par mépris pour certaines de ses positions politiques, mais je suis forcé d'admettre que "L'apprentissage de Duddy Kravitz" m'a donné la piqûre. Ce roman truculent et pittoresque sur un jeune Juif montréalais prêt à tout pour obtenir des terres m'a séduit par son humour, ses personnages pleins de vie et ses situations tragi-comiques.

L'écriture énergique de Richler est superbement rendue en français par la nouvelle traduction de Lori Saint-Martin et Paul Gagné. On déteste Duddy, mais on ne peut s'empêcher de le suivre dans ses odieuses manigances et de s'attacher à son père, son frère et ses meilleurs amis qu'il n'hésite pas à écraser dans sa fièvre immobilière. Un excellent roman plein d'auto-dérision et de charme qui m'a donné le goût de poursuivre ma découverte de l’œuvre de Richler.

[Ashlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is really well written but the main character, Duddy, is sometimes so incredibly selfish, callous, and insensitive that I often found it hard to keep reading. I kept hoping that he would progress and grow as a person but sadly he did not. I am sort of relieved to be done with this book.

[antonietta simona 🥐 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for school and it wasn’t good 😌

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

My love for Mordecai Richler's work continues to grow.

After putting off *Barney's Version* for roughly ten years, I decided to read it finally last year in 2020, and was totally blown away by it. I thought I'd try this book so soon after finishing the other one because of how well my last experience with him went.

I think *Barney's Version* is a better book but only marginally. I think that both actually have the same weakness, namely, the beginning seems a bit aimless and meandering. But beyond that, these are actually two very, very different books. *Barney's Version* was almost stream-of-consciousness and came across at times, especially at the start, as one magnificent, literary rant.

There's nothing so literary happening here. What you get is a black comedy -- a satire written in a very conventional novel format. It doesn't seem to have the maturity of *Barney's Version*, and perhaps that's because it was written forty years earlier in a pre-Quiet-Revolution Quebec. The immaturity, in facts, suits the story because it centers around a young man, just entering adulthood, as he develops and (not very successfully) deals with a deep love of money and ownership.

I don't know why Richler decided to start the book, perhaps it was the first forty pages or so, by making it seem like the book was actually about Duddy Kravitz' teacher, Macpherson, but once that little excursus was done, I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this book. The humor is great, combined with the fact that there are some truly rich insights into what it means to be a human being. The characters are so deep, compelling, and rich. I felt for every single one of them, and I thought that everyone who developed *earned* that development -- and for those who didn't ever change, that was part of the story too, and it was so well-done. I was hooked and kept getting more hooked.

[Carolyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically, toxic masculinity before toxic masculinity was a thing.

The pacing kind of felt uneven, but I guess this was one of Richler's early works. I hated almost all the people in this book, and it was only the authenticity of the setting, and the few brief glimpses of decency that tricked me into thinking this was a redemption story, that kept me reading it. I really wanted Virgil and Yvette to shack up, keep Duddy's land, and leave that jackass out to dry.

... that being said, a couple of quotes I liked:

"Look at me... take a good look because maybe I'm dirt now... but you listen here, kiddo. It's not alway going to be like this. If you want to bet on something then bet one me. I'm going to be a somebody and that's for sure" (pg. 94).
--I can always get behind a character who's this pissy and vengeful, somehow. At least until he ignores the domestic and professional contributions of his partner.

"Experience doesn't teach : it deforms" (pg. 279).
--Pretty much encapsulates a major theme of the book-corruption. Also angsty af, and the mention of Wilde after this quote makes me wonder if it's connected to Dorian Gray?

"A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others" (p. 280)
-- Geesh. So much all them deconstructionists trying to show the fluidity/multiplicity of identity. Also indicts those of us millennials who are still figuring out who we are at age XX. I mean, I've heard it said by personality psychologists that our personality is basically set by age 25, but even that shouldn't be wholly deterministic of who we will be--to ourselves and others--in the future.

[Jake Goretzki · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining coming-of-age, North American immigrant tale, with a well drawn, lovably roguish, morally wobbly protagonist. I enjoyed it, yet it felt instantly familiar, y'know? Maybe it's the Saul Bellow territory...young man on the make, etc; cast of spivs and strivers; the smell of fried liver. Or even Phillip Roth or Updike. I slip into the same mode. I love them.

It's something that often happens when I read north American novels of the fifties and sixties: everything goes Instagram filter and is instantly nostalgic and touching... in a way that is probably not even intended. A bit like how I imagine someone reading about London (who's never been there) will struggle not to see fog and wrought iron lampposts.

So: hard not to like really.

[Isabel Shiller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in search of my family history. My grandfather, like Duddy, grew up as a “St. Urbain Street Boy” in a cold water flat on Clark street. I feel lucky to have Richler’s novels as an immortalization of Jewish life in Montreal in the mid 20th century. I found myself a little in this book, too. Even though I’m a third Gen Jew who had a cushy Toronto upbringing, I saw myself in Duddy’s youthful insatiability. Maybe it’s the culture, maybe it’s the age, maybe it’s a personality thing, but I’m also sort of in constant search of the thing that man is nothing without and how to get it. For me it’s not land, though. I don’t know what it is. So maybe Duddy is ahead of me in that sense. But i think Im probably ahead of him in my own way.

“Ver gerharget” <3

[Giuseppe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Per gli amanti di Richler,

Si, mi sono immaginato Duddy Kravitz con le sembianze di Barney Panofsky, lo ammetto (che poi per me puó avere solo la faccia di Larry David, per quanto stimi Giamatti come attore, non c'entrava un fico secco). Peró non dall'inizio, bensí verso la seconda metá del libro. E cioé quando il giovane Duddy era ormai schiavo del sogno (non suo) che va rincorrendo ed al quale sacrifica tutto ció che gli é piú caro. Cioé immaginavo nella mia testa un ragazzo di vent'anni con le fattezze di uno di sessanta. Come se l'"apprendistato" del titolo non fosse altro che la corruzione dell'animo di un uomo adulto. Romanzo bellissimo.

[Nora · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Mordecai Richler read but certainly not my last. Really snappy prose and dialogue, and a very enthralling plot. Despite being written nearly 60 years ago, the character of Duddy Kravitz feels like he would fit right into a modern prestige dramas on HBO, and his whole arc is very satisfying. Really interesting to get some historical takes on what Montreal was like in the early 50s as well.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man without land indeed,

[Simona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Per conoscere questo scrittore, famoso soprattutto per "La versione di Barney", questo romanzo è sicuramente l'ideale per capirlo ed entrare nel suo mondo.
Impossibile non affezionarsi a questo personaggio cinico, farabutto e mascalzone, ma anche fragile per il vissuto e la difficile situazione famigliare.
Il lettore impara a conoscere Duddy Kravitz quando ha 15 anni e, da quel momento, fino ai 19 anni, vive con lui ogni avventura: da cameriere a impresario di film, ecc. Un personaggio che tenta di farsi strada nel mondo e guadagnare la fama o meglio quel pezzo di terra, perché come gli ha detto il nonno "Un uomo senza terra non è nessuno".
Una scrittura frettolosa, veloce che non lascia scampo e ci trascina nella vita di Duddy Kravitz, grottesco, ma vero, con i suoi difetti e la voglia di arrivare.

[❀ Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Duddy Kravitz was a staple in English classes in the 80s but this was not one that my class read. It is a coming of age story of an enterprising, motherless Jewish boy in Montreal. He is largely unsupervised by his father who has his own questionable business dealings and begins during his days in a Jewish school where he gets into trouble and abuses his teachers. His goal is to raise the money to buy land in Quebec after his grandfather told him that "a man without land is nobody". The leads to all sorts of schemes and challenges until he learns a life lesson once he has purchased the land.

The book is gritty and reminiscent of the time it was written, 1959. The book, itself as a senior citizen, has language and sentiments that are racist, misogynist and harsh, yet it is a creative lesson in resourcefulness, family, loss and resilience as Duddy comes of age in Montreal.

I am rounding up my 3.5 stars

[Michael E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Duddy is a young Jewish man in Montreal in the 50's. He has a dream of becoming a success in business. A man without land is nothing, he grandfather has told him. Duddy is a jerk, but he's not all bad. He gets into bad deals and some good ones, always borrowing money and sometimes paying it back. He's mostly a jerk to his girlfriend, in the pursuit of success. He lies and steals, but he has some heart. The book is full of chuckles and for me one big laugh, sustained for two minutes (I was high at the time). It's a family novel as Duddy has a brother he cares for and a father he argues with but loves and an uncle whom he hates (maybe). It is something like a Joseph Heller book in being funny while talking about serious things. Really good.

[Dani (The Pluviophile Writer) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others.”

4/5 stars.
ebook
Read from January 23, 2018 to February 4, 2018.

Review at The Pluviophile Writer: https://bit.ly/2IQZt1M

A Canadian classic; there are not many books that embody a French-Canadian setting and receive as much praise and success as this one did, especially with a protagonist as despicable as Duddy.

Saying that Duddy Kravitz is ambitious is an understatement.  After taking to heart what his grandfather said about a man owning land, Duddy is determined to rise above the Jewish ghetto in Montreal he has grown up in.

"A man without land is a nobody."

As you follow Duddy's life from a young age, you see that Duddy is as smart as he is cunning and his extensive risk taking is starting to pay off. The problem being, Duddy is a shithead con-artist who does not care about anyone but himself. A trouble-maker from a young age, Duddy wants to prove everyone wrong no matter what the cost. Before he has even turned 18, Duddy is trying to increase reputation and his finances to get that perfect plot of land. 



Despite Duddy's extensive faults, there is an admirable and likeable quality to him that almost has your rooting for him even as he uses and abuses people in his ambitious pursuits. You feel as if, maybe Duddy isn't as terrible as his ambitions make him and deep down he is a good person. From his obnoxious and hilarious youth to the hard working days of his early adulthood, Duddy befriends and makes enemies with a variety of characters that contribute to his overall success at the end of the novel. However, the success has come at a steep price, one that even Duddy has to question in the end.  I know that even I was a bit bothered, on both ends, when his relationships and friendships fell apart. One part of me wanted things to work out for Duddy and the other part of me wanted to scream at his friends to GTFO.

Richler does magic work with Duddy's character in getting you, as a reader, to love and hate him. So that even when Duddy does something horribly selfish, you are not surprised and still keep reading to see if Duddy's ridiculously ambitious and often crude plans come to fruition. The book balances the themes of greed and ambition perfectly, as well as encompassing a snapshot history of Montreal in the 1940s and 1950s. Richler also details some of the current views held on Jewish people during this time as well as some of the political stances of the local French-Canadians. The plot is mixed with humour, cigars, alcohol, and a little bit of violence here and there, making the book not only interesting but somewhat exciting as well.

I can't say this book would be for everyone but if you enjoy a little of debauchery and can tolerate a less than likeable protagonist out of the sake of your own ambitious curiosity than this book might be for you.

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